North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell (popular books to read .TXT) 📗

fatigue and distress. She dwelt upon what he must have borne in secret for long; her mother only replied coldly that he ought to have told her, and that then at any rate he would have had an adviser to give him counsel; and Margaret turned faint at heart when she heard her father’s step in the hall. She dared not go to meet him, and tell him what she had done all day, for fear of her mother’s jealous annoyance. She heard him linger, as if awaiting her, or some sign of her; and she dared not stir; she saw by her mother’s twitching lips, and changing colour, that she too was aware that her husband had returned. Presently he opened the room-door, and stood there uncertain whether to come in. His face was gray and pale; he had a timid, fearful look in his eyes; something almost pitiful to see in a man’s face; but that look of despondent uncertainty, of mental and bodily languor, touched his wife’s heart. She went to him, and threw herself on his breast, crying out—

‘Oh! Richard, Richard, you should have told me sooner!’

And then, in tears, Margaret left her, as she rushed upstairs to throw herself on her bed, and hide her face in the pillows to stifle the hysteric sobs that would force their way at last, after the rigid self-control of the whole day. How long she lay thus she could not tell. She heard no noise, though the housemaid came in to arrange the room. The affrighted girl stole out again on tip-toe, and went and told Mrs. Dixon that Miss Hale was crying as if her heart would break: she was sure she would make herself deadly ill if she went on at that rate. In consequence of this, Margaret felt herself touched, and started up into a sitting posture; she saw the accustomed room, the figure of Dixon in shadow, as the latter stood holding the candle a little behind her, for fear of the effect on Miss Hale’s startled eyes, swollen and blinded as they were.

‘Oh, Dixon! I did not hear you come into the room!’ said Margaret, resuming her trembling self-restraint. ‘Is it very late?’ continued she, lifting herself languidly off the bed, yet letting her feet touch the ground without fairly standing down, as she shaded her wet ruffled hair off her face, and tried to look as though nothing were the matter; as if she had only been asleep.

‘I hardly can tell what time it is,’ replied Dixon, in an aggrieved tone of voice. ‘Since your mamma told me this terrible news, when I dressed her for tea, I’ve lost all count of time. I’m sure I don’t know what is to become of us all. When Charlotte told me just now you were sobbing, Miss Hale, I thought, no wonder, poor thing! And master thinking of turning Dissenter at his time of life, when, if it is not to be said he’s done well in the Church, he’s not done badly after all. I had a cousin, miss, who turned Methodist preacher after he was fifty years of age, and a tailor all his life; but then he had never been able to make a pair of trousers to fit, for as long as he had been in the trade, so it was no wonder; but for master! as I said to missus, “What would poor Sir John have said? he never liked your marrying Mr. Hale, but if he could have known it would have come to this, he would have sworn worse oaths than ever, if that was possible!”’

Dixon had been so much accustomed to comment upon Mr. Hale’s proceedings to her mistress (who listened to her, or not, as she was in the humour), that she never noticed Margaret’s flashing eye and dilating nostril. To hear her father talked of in this way by a servant to her face!

‘Dixon,’ she said, in the low tone she always used when much excited, which had a sound in it as of some distant turmoil, or threatening storm breaking far away. ‘Dixon! you forget to whom you are speaking.’ She stood upright and firm on her feet now, confronting the waiting-maid, and fixing her with her steady discerning eye. ‘I am Mr. Hale’s daughter. Go! You have made a strange mistake, and one that I am sure your own good feeling will make you sorry for when you think about it.’

Dixon hung irresolutely about the room for a minute or two. Margaret repeated, ‘You may leave me, Dixon. I wish you to go.’ Dixon did not know whether to resent these decided words or to cry; either course would have done with her mistress: but, as she said to herself, ‘Miss Margaret has a touch of the old gentleman about her, as well as poor Master Frederick; I wonder where they get it from?’ and she, who would have resented such words from any one less haughty and determined in manner, was subdued enough to say, in a half humble, half injured tone:

‘Mayn’t I unfasten your gown, miss, and do your hair?’

‘No! not to-night, thank you.’ And Margaret gravely lighted her out of the room, and bolted the door. From henceforth Dixon obeyed and admired Margaret. She said it was because she was so like poor Master Frederick; but the truth was, that Dixon, as do many others, liked to feel herself ruled by a powerful and decided nature.

Margaret needed all Dixon’s help in action, and silence in words; for, for some time, the latter thought it her duty to show her sense of affront by saying as little as possible to her young lady; so the energy came out in doing rather than in speaking A fortnight was a very short time to make arrangements for so serious a removal; as Dixon said, ‘Any one but a gentleman—indeed almost any other gentleman—’ but catching a look at Margaret’s straight, stern brow just here, she coughed the remainder of the sentence away, and meekly took the horehound drop that Margaret offered her, to stop the ‘little tickling at my chest, miss.’ But almost any one but Mr. Hale would have had practical knowledge enough to see, that in so short a time it would be difficult to fix on any house in Milton-Northern, or indeed elsewhere, to which they could remove the furniture that had of necessity to be taken out of Helstone vicarage. Mrs. Hale, overpowered by all the troubles and necessities for immediate household decisions that seemed to come upon her at once, became really ill, and Margaret almost felt it as a relief when her mother fairly took to her bed, and left the management of affairs to her. Dixon, true to her post of body-guard, attended most faithfully to her mistress, and only emerged from Mrs. Hale’s bedroom to shake her head, and murmur to herself in a manner which Margaret did not choose to hear. For, the one thing clear and straight before her, was the necessity for leaving Helstone. Mr. Hale’s successor in the living was appointed; and, at any rate, after her father’s decision; there must be no lingering now, for his sake, as well as from every other consideration. For he came home every evening more and more depressed, after the necessary leave-taking which he had resolved to have with every individual parishioner. Margaret, inexperienced as she was in all the necessary matter-of-fact business to be got through, did not know to whom to apply for advice. The cook and Charlotte worked away with willing arms and stout hearts at all the moving and packing; and as far as that went, Margaret’s admirable sense enabled her to see what was best, and to direct how it should be done. But where were they to go to? In a week they must be gone. Straight to Milton, or where? So many arrangements depended on this decision that Margaret resolved to ask her father one evening, in spite of his evident fatigue and low spirits. He answered:

‘My dear! I have really had too much to think about to settle this. What does your mother say? What does she wish? Poor Maria!’

He met with an echo even louder than his sigh. Dixon had just come into the room for another cup of tea for Mrs. Hale, and catching Mr. Hale’s last words, and protected by his presence from Margaret’s upbraiding eyes, made bold to say, ‘My poor mistress!’

‘You don’t think her worse to-day,’ said Mr. Hale, turning hastily.

‘I’m sure I can’t say, sir. It’s not for me to judge. The illness seems so much more on the mind than on the body.’

Mr. Hale looked infinitely distressed.

‘You had better take mamma her tea while it is hot, Dixon,’ said Margaret, in a tone of quiet authority.

‘Oh! I beg your pardon, miss! My thoughts was otherwise occupied in thinking of my poor–-of Mrs. Hale.’

‘Papa!’ said Margaret, ‘it is this suspense that is bad for you both. Of course, mamma must feel your change of opinions: we can’t help that,’ she continued, softly; ‘but now the course is clear, at least to a certain point. And I think, papa, that I could get mamma to help me in planning, if you could tell me what to plan for. She has never expressed any wish in any way, and only thinks of what can’t be helped. Are we to go straight to Milton? Have you taken a house there?’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I suppose we must go into lodgings, and look about for a house.

‘And pack up the furniture so that it can be left at the railway station, till we have met with one?’

‘I suppose so. Do what you think best. Only remember, we shall have much less money to spend.’

They had never had much superfluity, as Margaret knew. She felt that it was a great weight suddenly thrown upon her shoulders. Four months ago, all the decisions she needed to make were what dress she would wear for dinner, and to help Edith to draw out the lists of who should take down whom in the dinner parties at home. Nor was the household in which she lived one that called for much decision. Except in the one grand case of Captain Lennox’s offer, everything went on with the regularity of clockwork. Once a year, there was a long discussion between her aunt and Edith as to whether they should go to the Isle of Wight, abroad, or to Scotland; but at such times Margaret herself was secure of drifting, without any exertion of her own, into the quiet harbour of home. Now, since that day when Mr. Lennox came, and startled her into a decision, every day brought some question, momentous to her, and to those whom she loved, to be settled.

Her father went up after tea to sit with his wife. Margaret remained alone in the drawing-room. Suddenly she took a candle and went into her father’s study for a great atlas, and lugging it back into the drawing-room, she began to pore over the map of England. She was ready to look up brightly when her father came down stairs.

‘I have hit upon such a beautiful plan. Look here—in Darkshire, hardly the breadth of my finger from Milton, is Heston, which I have often heard of from people living in the north as such a pleasant little bathing-place. Now, don’t you think we could get mamma there with Dixon, while you and I go and look at houses, and get one all ready for her in Milton? She would get a breath of sea air to set her up for the winter, and be spared all the fatigue, and Dixon would enjoy taking care of her.’

‘Is Dixon to go with us?’ asked